The popular macademia nut grows on macademia trees usually located on rough and rocky volcanic soil. The surface of the ground will often have many small crevices and be covered with rocks and other debris. When the macademia nuts fall from the trees, they often enter into the crevices of the ground and become mixed with the rocks and debris, making their harvest unusually difficult.
In the past, because of the difficulty in how the macademia nuts lie on the ground, harvesting has usually required extensive manual labor. This has limited the quantity of nuts harvested and contributes to the cost of the macademia nut meat when it is eventually marketed. There is need for a harvesting machine capable of overcoming the unusual harvesting problems associated with the macademia nut, and this invention addresses that need.
There have been nut harvesting machines devised in the past, but none is capable of successfully gathering the macademia nut. Typical of the nut harvesting machines now known are those shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,568,422; 3,693,331; and 4,194,346. In the first of these patents, both nuts and foreign material are ingested into a hood-like assembly through a narrow slot at the front thereof, the ingestion occurring because of a fan mounted on the assembly. The fan functions to discharge the debris from within the assembly, while the heavier nuts are accumulated within a tray. The machine is not capable of successfully gathering macademia nuts because of its inability to dislodge them from crevices, and for other reasons.
The nut harvester of U.S. Pat. No. 3,693,331 utilizes a blower to gather debris and pass it to discharge, and separate air jets to disturb the nuts where they lie. But again, the machine is not suited to the terrain where macademia nuts are found. Similarly, the blower arrangement and other elements of the harvester found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,194,346 are not capable of effectively gathering macademia nuts.
The harvester of the present invention is specifically designed to meet the unique conditions involved in gathering macademia nuts, and functions to allow their effective harvesting by machine.